2GG 



Statistics of the 



[No. 38, 



of Delhi, though at the present day, the high bearing of their ancient 

 race has merged into, and not to be distinguished from the inoffensive 

 and unpretending Mahratta cultivators. 



The low caste form a tenth of the community, of which the Dhair a 

 number above half; and the Mangs about a fourth; in this Sircar very 

 few Bheels are located, their duties as village watchmen being provided 

 for by Mangs and Dhairs : amongst the lower classes, may be noticed 

 a tribe of religious mendicants peculiar to this part of India, called 

 Mangbhoos, the founder of which resided at Py tun, and having no where 

 seen any published notice of these singular people, I have been in- 

 duced to give a few particulars of their origin, obtained from an ac- 

 count written by a learned Brahmin who lived at Pytun in the time 

 of Krishun Bhaut, the founder of the s*ect, who is represented as 

 having been the Gooroo to the Raja Depal of Bramapooree Pratish- 

 tan, the former name for Pytun, when Ramaeo Raja reigned at Deo- 

 ghiri A. D. 1333. 



The Gooroo rendered himself an object of execration to the com- 

 munity of Brahmins, by the discovery of a criminal connection he had 

 formed with a Mangnee named Deokee, the daughter of the Rajah's 

 Sweeper ; the penalty for an offence of such magnitude, being nothing 

 short of expulsion from caste : this was done, in. addition to which, 

 every species of indignity was heaped upon his head, and he was driv- 

 en forth from the city an outcast, bereft of the sympathies of all, 

 save her, for whom he had forfeited every social and civil right : in 

 company with the Mangnee, he then proceeded to the village of 

 Domegrah, where he took up his abode for some years, and had five 

 sons born to him in this period. Krishun Bhaut appears to have been 

 a person of considerable talent and determination, in so much, as so 

 far from sinking under the grievous curse of civil excommunication, 

 he rose above its consequences, and defying the malice of the Brah- 

 mins, promulgated a religious system of his own, which he dissemi- 

 nated far and wide by means of his five sons now grown up. His 

 doctrines repudiated a multiplicity of gods, and it is more than pro- 

 bable, that the hatred and contempt he endured, arose not so much 

 from his elicit intercourse with the outcast's daughter, as his offence 

 towards the priesthood, in endeavouring to restore the monotheistic 

 principle of Brahmanism, as taught in the Vedas : be this as it may, 

 he inculcated the exclusive worship of Krishna, taught them to eat 

 with none, but the initiated, to break all former ties of caste and reli- 



